Big Girls Don’t Cry

by Rebecca Traister (Free Press; $26)

In 2008, the women vying for—or close to—Presidential power raised the question of what it was to be a feminist in America today. Traister, who covered the 2008 Presidential campaign for Salon, analyzes it from a personal point of view, focussing on Hillary Clinton’s polarizing and contentious run, Michelle Obama’s potential as First Lady, and Sarah Palin’s representation of “a form of female power that was utterly digestible to those who had no intellectual or political use for actual women: feminism without the feminists.” Arguing that the speed of the modern news cycle didn’t allow for a proper contextualization of the election’s historical importance, Traister presents an excellent synthesis of a time “in which what was once called the women’s liberation movement found thrilling new life.” ♦

Sign up to get the best of The New Yorker delivered to your inbox every day